Your company brand is crucial to the success of your company. You’re likely familiar with branding strategies that promote your products, services, or corporate brand to potential customers. Think of your company’s brand as your reputation. The way people think of your company, products, services, and leadership all impact your consumer brand. Another important branding strategy is employer branding. Much like consumer branding, the goal of this strategy is retention.
Consumer branding helps retain customers, while employer branding engages your quality employees.
How to Create An Employer Branding Strategy That Works
What is Employer Branding?
Your employer brand is based on the perception of past, present, and future employees.
Actively maintaining your employer brand is referred to as employer branding. Employer branding can include numerous different strategies and initiatives.
An employer who focuses on providing top-quality employee experience may benefit from happier and more successful employees. Plus, the more satisfied an employee is, the more likely they will become a brand ambassador for their employer.
By and large, the most appropriate strategy should capitalize on your company’s relationship with its employees. How can you highlight that relationship to show candidates why they should work for you? A great way to start crafting a branding strategy is by defining your employee value proposition and candidate experience.
Employer Branding Statistics
Below, we’ve compiled a list of noteworthy employer branding statistics to help you understand branding’s importance.
General Trends in Employer Branding
- A CareerArc study showed that 96% of companies found employer branding important, but less than half—44%—actively engage their brand.
- A company with a bad reputation costs a company at least 10% more per hire.
- According to a Gartner report, the three main attributes that attract talent are compensation, work-life balance, and stability at work.
- Candidates shared that three significant reasons they left a job were related to compensation, future career opportunities, or people management.
How Companies Connect With Candidates
- Candidates are more likely to check a company’s employer brand before applying for a job.
- The source candidates trust the most for employer brand information is current employees.
- Candidates place social media at the top of their job search resources. Meanwhile, 91% of employers now use social media throughout the hiring process.
- The second most common reason that employers use social media when recruiting is to increase employer brand recognition.
Generational Divide in What Candidates Desire
- Millennial job seekers find employee value propositions that feature sustainability initiatives and flexible work policies attractive.
- Gen Z job seekers are inquisitive, which means they tend to ask for job expectations and company information upfront.
- Older generations, like Gen X, want the chance to grow their career. Thus, career growth opportunities, such as training and development, are appealing.
Employer Branding Strategy Elements: What is Your Strategy Made Of?
Identifying Your Employee Value Proposition
Employer branding and a company’s value to employees go hand in hand. Think of your employee value proposition as the foundation for your branding strategy. To create a consistent strategy, you need to know what you promote to potential employees.
To get started, let’s define the employee value proposition.
An employee value proposition is a set of rewards or benefits an employee accepts in exchange for their workplace performance.
When specifying your employee value proposition, consider your company’s mission, vision, and workplace culture. What does your company value the most in these areas? Try to think outside the box; while compensation benefits are a given, more candidates desire meaningful roles over higher paychecks.
The best approach to take when highlighting employee benefits is to capitalize on what you do best.
Discovering Your Candidate Experience
Another essential factor to cover in your branding strategy is the candidate experience.
The experience a candidate has when interacting with your brand isn’t limited to your interview process. With websites like Glassdoor within easy access, a candidate has likely checked your company’s reviews before applying. Candidates might even form opinions about potential employers due to past experiences as a customer.
How can you learn more about your candidate experience? By directly asking your candidates! Put together a candidate experience survey and send it to past candidates to gain their perspective. Through this survey, you gain insights from their unique perspective. You might even notice trends appear in this feedback, showing you where improvements can begin.
Other resources that illustrate great candidate experience are candidate experience awards programs. The Candidate Experience Awards are a great place to find examples of companies with excellent candidate feedback.
Employer Branding Best Practices
Planning a branding strategy is complex. You might have fantastic ideas for your strategy, but without the right structure, they won’t succeed.
What are the employer branding best practices you should follow to ensure your strategy is successful?
Identify Your Branding Goals
Identifying your branding goals may seem obvious, but it is an important first step! What is the main goal or set of goals your strategy should champion for your company?
Sample goals for a branding strategy include:
- Increase positive brand awareness in your target candidate market.
- Improve the candidate experience that you provide through better communication.
- Find the right talent without worrying about a lengthy recruitment process.
- Lower costs for recruiting by narrowing down your candidate pool.
Using your goals as guidelines, you can ensure the rest of your strategy stays aligned with them.
Adapt to Your Ideal Candidate
A crucial part of any recruiting process is to define your ideal candidate. You can also use this candidate profile in your branding strategy.
When looking for ways to improve candidate experience, for example, you can look to your candidate profile. What does this profile say about what the candidate looks for in a job?
If you have a branding strategy, consider how your target candidate has changed over time. Is the strategy you made five years ago still applicable to the ideal candidate you imagine today?
Elevate Your Brand Through a Recruitment Marketing Strategy
An important best practice for creating a branding strategy is to understand how each moving park works.
The moving parts include your candidate experience, employee value proposition, and other factors. While examined individually, each factor will rely on the other parts of your strategy to elevate your brand’s success. Your employer branding processes are part of another, larger process known as recruitment marketing.
Recruitment marketing strategies focus on promoting what you created in your employer brand strategy. This promotion can be through various channels, such as video advertising, newsletters, and social media activity.
Find an Experience Employer Branding Firm to Partner With
The best thing you can do when planning a branding strategy is to consult with an expert.
There are expert firms like BestCompaniesAZ that focus on employer branding. BestCompaniesAZ has over 22 years of experience as a PR, marketing, and employer branding firm that builds and promotes strong brands.
Knowing that the best employer branding strategies are unique, BestCompaniesAZ takes a different approach to branding than most firms.
Contact BestCompaniesAZ to create an employer brand that you and your employees will love!
